Many Bacillus production strains are used for recombinant production of enzymes, and there are often regulatory restrictions concerning the presence of recombinant DNA in the final enzyme product.
A nuclease-encoding gene from Staphylococcus aureus was integrated into the genomes of several Poly(3-hydroxyalkanoates; PHA) producers and expressed, in order to express the nuclease and thereby reduce the otherwise high viscosity of cell-lysates due to the presence of chromosomal DNA. Staphylococcal nuclease was readily expressed in PHA-producing Pseudomonas strains and was directed to the periplasm, and occasionally to the culture medium, without affecting PHA production or strain stability [Zhuang et al. Reduction of Cell Lysate Viscosity during Processing of Poly(3-Hydroxyalkanoates) by Chromosomal Integration of the Staphylococcal Nuclease Gene in Pseudomonas putida. Appl Environ Microbiol. 1999 April; 65(4): 1524-1529].
The phosphate-starvation stimulon of Bacillus licheniformis has been analyzed at the transcriptional and translational level. It was shown that B. licheniformis has evolved its own strategies to cope with this nutrient limitation. By means of the secretome analysis a phytase was identified as the most abundant protein under phosphate-starvation conditions. Data of this study indicate that, unlike in B. subtilis, phosphate starvation in B. licheniformis does not induce the SigmaB-dependent general stress response (Hoi et al. The phosphate-starvation response of Bacillus licheniformis. 2006. Proteomics, Vol. 6 (12) pp. 3582-3601).
During phosphate starvation, Bacillus subtilis regulates genes in the PhoP regulon to reduce the cell's requirement for this essential substrate and to facilitate the recovery of inorganic phosphate from organic sources such as teichoic and nucleic acids. Among the proteins that are highly induced under these conditions is PstS, the phosphate-binding lipoprotein component of a high-affinity ABC-type phosphate transporter. PstS is encoded by the first gene in the pst operon, the other four members of which encode the integral membrane and cytoplasmic components of the transporter (Allenby et al. 2004. Post-transcriptional regulation of the Bacillus subtilis pst operon encoding a phosphate-specific ABC transporter. Microbiol. 150 (Pt 8) pp. 2619-2628.